Fraternal Understanding
by Sulix
Summary: Don thinks about his brother, because really, who else understands but them? NO SLASH


_A/N: Standard disclaimer applies. Dedicated to my little bro, whom I love and hate.  
_

Fraternal understanding

No one really knew what was like to be Charles Eppes' older brother, not their parents nor their friends.

And Don couldn't really blame them, it was hard for Don himself to understand their relationship, it was hard for him to process it. At least in the beginning.

It was always disconcerting for him to love someone so much that he would give his life to them or for them, and at the same time hate them with a passion. And it wasn't something anyone could easily understand, you have to live it, to feel it in your bones to do so.

His life had always been a series of contrasts.

He would be furious that he had to spend a major part of his time protecting Charlie, but hell could freeze over and melt a thousand times before he allowed anyone to try and take his place as his baby bro's protector.

He ranted all trough out high school about how he hated being in his little genius brother's shadow, but anyone who sabotaged Charlie's science work or made fun of him in English because he was pretty much average, could begin to write their own epitaph.

He had been plain cruel to Charlie all of their teenage years, but when Charlie entered his high school everyone, and that meant every single one of the omnipresent bullies, had learned the tough way not to mess with Don Eppes' little brother in two weeks flat.

He would blame Charlie for being too damn clingy and killing his social life, but he passed up on dates with his girlfriend(s) or college parties with the guys just to stay at home solving puzzles or playing table games with his socially inept brother on a Friday night.

He called Charlie every single foul name that he knew would hit Charlie harder than anything anyone else called him, but he lost the count before he began to keep track of the number of friends whose ass he had kicked bloody, of the number of girlfriends he had dumped just for saying that Charlie was annoying.

The years passed, they want to different colleges, they saw each other every third blue moon and talked every second one.

Then their mother got sick.

When he came back to gauge the situation he called Kim within two hours and told her his brother needed him, his family needed him. She mailed him the ring.

And it was hard, colossally hard.

His mother was dying and was taking it better than the three of them.

His father trying to be there for her and his sons but busting at the seams ageing a year per day.

And Charlie... Charlie fighting emotional stress with the kind of tiredness that it can't really be felt through the numbness but kills you day by day: a forgotten meal, a forgotten night, finishing work six months before it's due, solving the unsolvable, working his brain to its maximum capacity in a way so thoroughly focused that every feeling, every signal his body emitted was utterly ignored.

Don had never felt so ambivalently towards his little brother than in that moment. He had seen Charlie stand before their mothers closed door for hours at a time but never stepping inside, as he had noticed that there were tears in his baby brothers eyes when he was so deep in his mathematical little world that he didn't notice he was crying.

But Don also noticed that their father was worried sick about him, that instead of trying to be with his family he detached in every sense of the word, that he didn't really care how his attitude was affecting them... that he didn't went to their mother funeral.

He had never wanted to strangle someone until their eyes poped out before as much as that day, instead he went to bed without looking at anyone and cried. He cried to exhaustion and then more. He cried over happy memories, he cried over sad ones, he cried for the time he spent with his mum, the time he didn't and the time he couldn't any more.

And after that, after minutes-hours-days of dry sobs because he didn't have any more tears to cry, he remembered the blank, totally absent and uncomprehending look in Charlie's eyes when he went to tell him that _Mom's dead Charlie, she finally died... Are you listening to me? She just died! _and suddenly he had tears left for his baby bro, his buddy, his Chuck. For the person alive that was more dead-like than the one who had just died. For the one in the world he gave up work and love, the prospect of a good future, that was still alive but that hurt so damn much that he couldn't hurt at all.

They entered a new dynamic. Don was sharing a city with his brother for the first time in more than a decade and they adapted, each to his own. They saw each other maybe once, twice a week, made polite conversation over dinner at their father's home and watched the ball games over a beer.

No more, no less.

They didn't have the bitter-sweet connection they had before, it was a nice, lukewarm, comfortable relationship without the abrasive love-hate of years past. Almost as strangers.

Then everything changed. They began to work together, they saw each other more frequently, Don remembered what it was like to have to protect his brother, they both recreated that tight, stifling bond but in a way more healthy manner.

So with the time, Don had learned to smile and nod when someone commented on how hard it must have been to have Charlie as a little brother, he didn't try to explain... that was between Charlie and him.

But really, when he saw his brother across the bullpen, joking with his team after a well ending case, or when he saw him in his classroom with his students, Don could only feel proud of being Charles Eppes' big brother. He couldn't help but feel it was all worth it, after all he did like having his baby brother around...

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A/N: Edited Sep 5th, 2012


End file.
